Forrester Blogs › Category: itSMF

Squeezing The Value Out Of ITIL, Or Any Other IT, Training

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on May 3, 2013

Stephen Mann

I promised a second blog based on the English-language presentations at the itSMF Norway annual conference but then I had a better idea … rather than just giving you the something akin to Twitter highlights I decided to be cheeky and ask a couple of the presenters to write blogs based on their presentations. Smart or lazy, I think it is better for you the reader.

Here is the first from Paul Wilkinson of GamingWorks – no stranger to writing blogs for my Forrester blog roll. The second is by Stuart Rance of HP and this will appear soon. Paul’s topic?

“How to improve the Return On Value (ROV) of an IT service management training initiative”

To quote Paul: “Hardly an innovative, exciting, sexy subject when everybody wants to hear about cloud, BYOD, social media, and all that new stuff.” BUT Paul was asked to present the same session he delivered in 2012 given that it was one of the top 3 well-received the previous year. I personally thoroughly enjoyed it – Paul is good at making you believe that there is “a better way” when it comes to changing the way we think about IT service delivery.

What were Paul’s key messages?

What was so important? Why should you read on? What should YOU now do differently?

Paul set the scene nicely. In his words (with a little editing by yours truly):

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ITSM And The itSMF In Norway – Different In So Many Ways?

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on March 20, 2013

Stephen Mann

I’d not been to Norway for 32 years (I’m now embarrassed to say), so I really didn’t know what to expect as I travelled to the annual itSMF Norway conference in Oslo last week. I certainly didn’t expect the high price of just about everything; and I wondered if I would get a true picture of Norway in an airport hotel (in Oslo) with over 600 IT and IT service management (ITSM) professionals.

Now this is where my blogging could get me into trouble (or even more trouble), as I make a few personal observations as well as ITSM observations. But please humor me – they are all said in a very positive manner as I wonder what I missed in the Norwegian-language sessions and what those outside of Norway miss everyday. I’ll also write a second blog to cover some of the valuable content as soon as I make time.

My initial observations …

Firstly – “Wow, over 600 attendees for a country the size of Norway.” According to Wikipedia, Norway has five million citizens. You can do the math (or, as I would say, “maths”) relative to other countries. We have 63 million citizens in the UK …

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IT Service Management In 2013 – How Far Have We Come Since 2009?

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on January 3, 2013

Stephen Mann

While attempting to clear my desk before the Christmas break I stumbled upon a bright-pink USB memory stick that contained the collected presentations from the 2009 itSMF UK annual conference. Having satisfied my curiosity as to the size of the memory stick (I’d forgotten that USB sticks were ever that small), I then wondered:

  • What were the IT service management (ITSM) hot topics in November 2009?
  • Which industry luminaries were presenting on them?
  • How many presentations would still make it to the 2013 itSMF UK conference?
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How Gremlins And Vanilla Ice Can Help Us Deliver Better IT Services

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on December 4, 2012

Stephen Mann

After the success of his previous blogs (including The ABC Of ICT — The Top 10 People Issues), Paul Wilkinson of GamingWorks returns with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at IT, IT service management (ITSM), IT service delivery, and this “IT end user thing” some people call a “customer.”

I hope that it makes you smile but, more importantly, I hope that it makes you act. I’ll leave it to Paul . . .

“IT’s not about the IT?” Really?

I’m always surprised — no, amazed — in fact staggered. That’s it, literally staggered, at how poor “we in IT” are at being customer and service focused. Ever since I passed my ITIL v1 exam I have been aware that ITIL (the ITSM best practice framework) has always, always, been about customers and service. David Wheeldon taught me this when I was a “technogeek” who thought that end users were something dangerous and contagious.

I used to think that we should outsource the business, as they got in the way of IT and were simply annoying. David taught me that end users were human after all, just like us, and it was our job to provide services and value to them. I wasn’t convinced initially, but I was willing to be open to the idea.

That was more than 20 years ago, and while we have had ITIL in all its variants for more than 25 years, we still score badly on the customer-focused side of things.

Why does IT struggle with the concept of customers?

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IT Service Management In 2012: In The Words Of Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On?”

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on July 30, 2012

Stephen Mann

I bet in your head you just sang “What’s Going On” to yourself – I hope that you did, it’s a classic. Anyway, it’s that time again … my Forrester colleague Glenn O’Donnell and the itSMF USA are set to launch their annual itSMF USA/Forrester IT service management (ITSM) survey and I can’t help think that, as we are in a radically different ITSM world from when they did the last survey, the results will be significantly different – showing that we have upped our collective ITSM game.

What do I mean by “radically different ITSM world”?

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Giving Back To The ITSM Community: We Move, If Slowly, But With Purpose

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on February 10, 2012

Stephen Mann

It started as a blog called Giving Back To The IT Service Management Community – a personal plea for anyone involved in IT operations, IT service delivery, IT support, etc., to “give back” to the larger community. Hopefully it highlighted (or reminded us of) the need for the creation of lower-level, more granular, and ultimately more practical best/good practice information that is freely available to IT service management (ITSM) practitioners; as a quick start mechanism and/or to prevent the continued reinvention of the wheel by organizations wishing to better themselves.

Many (OK, some) ask “Where has this gone?” or “Where is the free content?” Great questions, but ones that I will conveniently avoid (hopefully like a skilled politician); although others involved, I expect and hope, will provide updates on this in the comments section below.

To some Back2ITSM might appear yet another forum for “the usual suspects” (bagsy me be Verbal Kint) to “socialize” themselves to their ultimate downfall. However, I beg to differ. I feel that this has legs, no matter how short those legs might eventually be; which brings me to the reasons for this quickly written blog:

  • I still need to feedback the limited but interesting responses to the Back2ITSM survey.
  • I want to publicize some Back2ITSM “coming soons.”
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From The Coal Face: Real World IT Service Management And ITIL Adoption Sound Bites

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on January 5, 2012

Stephen Mann

Remember 2011? It seems a long time ago already.

At the start of August, I wrote a speculative blog called Giving Back To The IT Service Management Community which was somewhat of a personal plea for anyone involved in IT operations, IT service delivery, IT support, etc. to “give back” to the larger community. This highlighted (or reminded us of) the need for the creation of lower-level, more granular, and ultimately more practical best practice information that is freely available to IT service management (ITSM) practitioners; as a quick start mechanism and/or to prevent the continued reinvention of the wheel by organizations wishing to better themselves. It all looked good with over three thousand unique views on the Forrester Blog site alone.

In late October (yes, I know I am slow), I published ITSM Practitioner Health Check: The ITSM Community Strikes Back with an associated survey hoping that hundreds if not thousands of ITSM practitioners would offer their views as to where we, as a community, need most help. The results?

ITSM Practitioner Health Check: initial results

Firstly, I need to temper my expectations: the survey was open for two months and plugged by many on Twitter and by organizations such as the itSMF UK, the SDI, and Hornbill but still only 149 people started the survey. Why did I say “started,” because only 76 completed the two “meaty” questions.

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ITIL Global Adoption Rates, Well At Least A Good Indication Of Where It Is At

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on January 3, 2012

Stephen Mann

ITIL is such a commonly used word in the kingdom of IT service management (ITSM) that it is easy to assume it to be a global phenomenon (how many people say “ITIL” when they mean, or should mean, “ITSM”?). After all the Official ITIL Website (http://www.itil-officialsite.com/) cites ITIL as:

“The most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. ITIL provides a cohesive set of best practice, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally.”

We know that ITIL exam numbers continue to be strong: with ITIL Foundation Certificate pass rates between January 2009 and July 2011 as follows courtesy of http://itsminfo.com/?p=245:

  • ITIL V2 Foundation: 142,000
  • ITIL V3 Foundation Bridge: 33,000 (existing certification holders updating)
  • ITIL V3 Foundation: 548,000
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The ABC Of ICT - The Top 10 People Success Factors For IT Service Management

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on December 15, 2011

Stephen Mann

In a previous blog (The ABC Of ICT - The Top 10 People Issues), Paul Wilkinson of GamingWorks and I shared how the “ABC of ICT” (the Attitude, Behavior, and Culture issues), or the “people factor,” is a critical success or fail factor in IT, and particularly IT service management (ITSM), operational and improvement initiatives.

In this blog, we want to move on from the “resistance areas” and share the top 10 critical success factors for dealing with the ABC of ICT. These are borrowed from the ABC of ICT - An Introduction to the Attitude, Behavior and Culture of ICT book by Paul and Jan Schilt so that, as Paul likes to say, “We can make a difference together.”

Top 10 people critical success factors for IT

  1. Involve all functions in design. Involve and include all functional units, development and operations. Bringing people together in face-to-face meetings, workshops, forums, and simulations to stimulate discussion, engagement, involvement, and address resistance. Resistance is a fact; you will encounter it. Bringing people together helps to make it visible, helps to create buy-in, and empowers people to change their own ways of working.
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Paging The IT Organization: You Need To Support The People Not The Technology

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on November 25, 2011

Stephen Mann

Sorry but I’m “frustrated of Peterborough” (but not directly at IT for once).  Having just come off a half an hour call with two “major credit card provider” customer service staff, I’m frustrated to within an inch of screaming at someone. In some ways this blog is my outlet (but there is interesting stuff eventually).

You might think I'm overreacting, however, when one’s time is so limited these days, it is difficult to rise above the fact that I wasted 20 of the 30 minutes most likely because the “major credit card provider” has off-shored its customer support to save money (please note that the off-shoring is an assumption on my part based on my interactions).

But what has this to do with IT?

Hopefully you didn’t need to ask this question … I had an issue with a credit card service; many have issues with corporate IT services. We all call up, we all expect a quick resolution, and many expect to be treated in a customer, rather than supplier, focused manner.

Oddly enough, I spoke about this exact point at the itSMFUK London Regional yesterday … from an IT service management perspective (well specifically a service/help desk perspective). That we are now too focused on the mechanics of things (tool and process, AND scripts) and that, in some ways by virtue of this, we have “dumbed-down” the IT service desk.

This is not intended as an insult to service desk people, they have a difficult job: a job where they day in, day out, deal with the fallout from IT failures and the potentially unhappy customers. In an environment where there is very little “good news” or praise.

So what went/goes wrong?

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